The Geographies of Policy: Assembling National Marine Aquaculture Policy in the United
States

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Abstract

In the United States, marine aquaculture is increasingly viewed as way to offset stagnating
wild fisheries production, help faltering coastal community economies, and address
a growing national seafood trade deficit. The national government has outwardly supported
the development of the sector through policies, plans, and other statements. However,
many social and environmental questions surround prospective expansion, and actual
policy development and implementation has been slow. This dissertation builds on recent
work in human geography and policy studies to explore US national marine aquaculture
policy processes, conceptualizing policy as a dynamic assemblage of actors, spaces,
practices, and relations. It contributes to our understanding of oceans geography
and policy processes by addressing three questions: (1) How do actors interact within
the assemblage negotiate, construct, and develop national policies? (2) What practices
are actors employing to shape aquaculture policymaking, and what views underlie them?
(3) What are the practical, and often local, implications of these processes, and
how do actors interact with and within policy development (or not)?

These questions are approached empirically by tracing the US national marine aquaculture
policy assemblage across time, space, and scale. The dissertation draws on research
conducted within and outside the US government, focusing on the internal practices
of the state and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), as well
as a case of local and regional policy implementation and development in New England.
It also focuses on offshore aquaculture policy, as well as marine aquaculture more
generally. The dissertation uses discourse analysis, ethnography, and other approaches
to conduct a geographic policy analysis that explores the processes and relationships
producing national marine aquaculture policy in the United States.

Overall, this research shows that broad or monolithic conceptualization of the state,
its motivations, its practices, and their implications are oversimplified. The federal
government features a diversity of actors, discourses, and ideas about marine aquaculture
and its policy development, which manifest in different paths to reform and conflicting
efforts within the state itself. Further, national policy processes are not contained
within the national government, but are co-produced by mobile and dynamic actors and
policies across contexts. Actors deploy particular discourses about marine aquaculture’s
risks and opportunities, government agencies and offices claim and reclaim authority
over the sector, bureaucrats engage in diverse everyday policy practices and interactions,
and policy ideas and policies themselves change as they are translated and deployed
in new spaces and by different actors. Together, these processes suggest that rather
than expecting a totalizing form of marine aquaculture development in the United State,
it is important to consider the ruptures and opportunities within the assemblage that
might allow for alternative forms of policy, coordination, and implementation at all
scales.